CryptoKitties craze has started over a couple of months ago and has became an instant trend not only in the cryptocurrency community but also among people who never used crypto before.
So what are CryptoKitties?
CryptoKitties are collectibles based on the Ethereum blockchain technology. They're similar to other tokens that are used as cryptocurrencies, except they have built in rules like to be able to multiply once when breeding / stirring contract is signed between two owners of crypto Kittens.
How does it work?
Each kitty is much like a coin you have and it can breed with other kitties. Once you sign a contract with another owner that has a kitty as well, your kitty and the kitty from the other side of the contract will produce a new unit, a newborn kitty.
NOTE: Only one kitten gets produced when breeding, we will explain this later on.
Now when it comes to multiplying, each kitty has its limits on reproduction, i.e. each time it reproduces, it will get a little bit slower breeding time. So, there are the fast ones, the swift ones etc.
Also, there are generations, like Generation 0, 1, 2, 3 etc.
Every time a kitty reproduces its reproduction ability i.e. the time it needs to cooldown after breeding gets reduced. Also all the new kittens that are born by slower cooling down kitties will also be born with a slowed down reproduction ability. The same goes with generations. If you breed two 0 Generation kitties, you will get a Generation 1 kitty.
CONCLUSION: The reproduction ability of kitties will eventually going to be slowed down as they keep reproducing and the new generations of kitties are born. There's an estimated number of total 4 billion kitties to be created this way. Much similar to bitcoin mining.
CryptoKitties Marketplace
Once you decide to give this thing a try, you can't do it for free literally. You need to install the MetaMask wallet browser extension and get some ETH to it. At the time of writing this article average ETH transaction cost is around $9 USD (crazy but true).
So, bear in mind if you deposit $20 of worth of ETH, you might find yourself depositing another $50 in like twenty minutes once you realize you need some extra funds to play this game (yeah I paid that fee twice!)
Once you have your ETH in your MetaMask wallet and assuming that you already created an account on CryptoKitties.co, you are good to go to the Marketplace and find some cats.
NOTE: The default GAS price which is used for the ingame transaction costs is set to 25, you can lower that up to 1, but expect slow processing when you do that, currently if you set it up to 2 you will get a decent transaction speed. The number above i.e. Gas Price Estimation, you should not touch that one - if you still want to play with this, you can check this website: https://ethgasstation.info/, for me it helped a lot to know that I can lower the transaction cost significantly by setting up the GAS price to 1 or 2 down from default 25.
What's the value of those kitties?
Like with all collectibles, it is all about supply and demand. The rarest your kitty, the more expensive it should be. There are 0 generation ones which are considered as rarest regarding the generation attribute. However, bear in mind that the generation attribute itself won't make the kitty so unique since there's a new Generation 0 printed out and offered to the public approximately each 15 minutes (consider it a kind of developer mining since they get profits from that).
Cattributes
The other factor which makes kitties unique is so called cattributes, these are considered like genomes and there are the rare ones and the less rare ones. Obviously the rarest ones would be the most expensive ones. In order to check which are the rarest cattributes currently you can use the Cryptokittydex website (https://cryptokittydex.com/cattributes)
Each kitty gets a default number of cattributes. The more of the rare ones it has, the more rare it is. You can use the Catfol.io calculator to estimate the rarity and the value of a kitty (https://catfol.io/calculator.html) - the lower the rarity percentage is the better.
Also, there are 'special edition' ones like 'fancy' or 'exclusive' ones. But bear in mind that it seems there's too much of the fancy ones with the wings that all look the same, however, they still might be good for breeding if you want to get some surprising combination of genomes.
You can consider this one a rare https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitty/479806
Breeding kitties
You need to know that when you put your kitty to stir on the marketplace, you WON'T get a kitty. So, you most likely don't want to do that for free (like I did). You most likely want to set up a price that would make it profitable for your cat to stir and give someone a kitty. Given that the lowest cost of putting a cat to stir on the Marketplace is around $0.23 (if you put the GAS price down to 1, and don't hesitate to wait for the transaction to confirm for like 10 minutes, then you really need to consider before stirring your kitty for free.
If you want to breed new kittens, prepare to spend some money. Average cost for breeding a kitty is around $5 - $10, no matter if you do it by taking someones from the marketplace or by breeding between your own kitties (you need to have at least two of them to do this on your own).
Again, breeding with lower generations and rare genomes would eventually get you a rare kitty although not guaranteed. There is a KittyCalc tool (https://kittycalc.co/) if you want to try to calculate what would you get by breeding two particular cats.
Also, bear in mind that when breeding, for example Gen 1 with Gen 2, you will always get the lower gen.
Selling kitties
When selling kitties, you can try to calculate how rare it is and set up some price you would like to sell it for. If you get the one that looks like the queen one above, that looks really rare, you might want to do some research on it's qualities before selling it for cheap. Some kitties are being sold for thousands of dollars.
Buy and hold?
It is hard to tell if buy and hold low generation kitties would be a good strategy. But if you do that you should look for the rare and fast ones.
Another strategy that could bring income is simply by buying low generation cats and putting them on the marketplace to stir for a price you're willing to compensate for. It costs you around $0.3 to put a kitty on sale or for stirring if you put the GAS price to be 1 or 2.
Future updates
Developers of the game have announced that they might be bringing in some new genomes i.e. cattributes like power, this would eventually make breeding even more interesting with the newer generation of cats.
Sending kitties as gifts
Yes you can do that, if you want to gift someone a kitty, you can do it. The process is similar to putting it on the marketplace to sell or breed.
Have a kitten to spare?
If you have some kitties you would like to spare you can send them over to me, here's my address:
0x03beb57143451cbe55f1be5d686af4c4719bb941
You can check my collection here:
https://www.cryptokitties.co/profile/0x03beb57143451cbe55f1be5d686af4c4719bb941
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